“Now, Craddy, my dear, dear boy”, said Uncle John, when things had been
done with lemon and cold water, and all that wherein discussion so
utterly beats description, “you know me too well to suppose that I wish
to pass things lightly. I know well enough that you will look the hard
world full in the face. And so should I do, in your case. All I wish
is that you should do it, not with spite, or bile, or narrowness, but
broadly as a Christian”.
“It is hard to talk about that now”, said Cradock, inhaling charity,
and puffing away all acrimony; “Uncle John, I hope I may come to it as
my better spirit returns to me”.
“I hope it indeed, and believe it, Crad; I donʼt see how it can be
otherwise, with a young man of your breadth of mind, and solid faith to
help you. An empty lad, who snaps up stuff because he thinks it fine,
and garbles it into garbage, would become an utter infidel, under what
you have suffered. With you, I believe, it will be otherwise; I believe
you will be enlarged and purified by sorrow—the night which makes the
guiding–star so much the clearer to us”. John Rosedew was drinking no
Schiedam—allow me to explain—though pretending rare enjoyment of it,
and making Cradock drink a little, because his heart was down so.
After they had talked a pipeful longer, not great weighty sentiments,
but a deal of kindly stuff, the young fellow got up quietly, and said,
“Now, Uncle John, I must go”.
“My boy, I can trust you anywhere, after what you have been telling
me. Of human nature I know nothing, except”—for John thought he did
know something—“from my own little experience. I find great thoughts
in the Greek philosophers; but somehow they are too general, and too
little genial. One thing I know, we far more often mistrust than trust
unwisely. And now I can trust you, Cradock; in the main, you will stand
upright. Stop, my boy; you must have a scrip; I was saving it for your
birthday”.
“You donʼt despise me, I hope”? said Cradock; “you donʼt think me a
coward for running away so? After what has happened to–day, I should go
mad, if I stopped here. Not that that would matter much; only that, if
it were so, I should be sure to _do it_”.
John Rosedew had no need to ask what he meant by the last two words,
for the hollow voice told him plainly. But for him, it is likely enough
that it would have been done ere this; at any rate, in the first
horror, his hand alone had prevented it. The parson trembled at the
idea, but thought best not to dwell upon it.
“‘Reformidare mortem est animi pusillanimi’, but ‘reformidare vitam’
is ten times worse, because impious. Therefore in your case, my boy,
it is utterly impossible, as well as ignoble towards us who love you
so. Remember that you will break at least two old hearts you owe some
duty to, if you allow your own to be broken. And now for your viaticum;
see how you have relieved me. While you lived beneath Hymettian beams
in the goods of Tyre and Cyprus, I, even I your godfather, knew not
what to give you. The thought has been vexing me for months, and now
what a simple solution! You shall have it in the original dross, to pay
the toll on the Appian road, at least the South–Western Railway. Figs
to Athens, I thought it would be, or even as eels to Copaïs; and now
‘serves iturum Cæsarem’. I believe it is at the twenty–first page of my
manuscript, such as it is, upon the Sabellian elements”.
After searching in three or four drawers—for he was rather astray
at the moment, though generally he could put his hand, even in the
dark, upon any particular one of his ten thousand books—he came upon
the Sabellian treatise, written on backs of letters, on posters, on
puffing circulars, even on visiting–cards, and cast–away tradesmenʼs
tickets; and there, at the twenty–first page or deltis, lay a 50l. Bank
of England note, with some very tough roots arranged diamond–wise on
the back, and arrows, and hyphens, and asterisks, flying about thickly
between them. These he copied off, in a moment, on a piece of old
hat–lining, and then triumphantly waved the bank–note in the air. It
was not often poor Uncle John got hold of so much money; too bitterly
knew Aunt Doxy how large was the mesh of his purse.
While Cradock gazed with great admiration, John Rosedew, with his
fingers upon his lips, and looking half ashamed of himself, went to a
cupboard, whose doors, half open, gave a glimpse of countless sermons.
From among them he drew a wide–mouthed bottle of leeches, and set it
upon the table. Then he pulled out the stopper, unplugged it, and lo!
from a hole in the cork fell out two sovereigns and a half one. As this
money rolled on the table, John could not help chuckling a little.
“Ha, good sister Eudoxia, have I overreached thee again? Double
precaution there, you see, Crad. She has a just horror of my sermons,
and she runs at the sight of a leech. ‘Non missura cutemʼ—be sure, not
a word about it, Crad. That asylum is inviolable, and sempitern, I
hope. I shall put more there next week”.
Cradock took the money at once, with the deepest gratitude, but no
great fuss about it; for he saw how bitterly that good man would feel
it, if he were small enough to refuse.
I shall not dwell upon their good–bye, as we have had enough
valediction; only Cradock promised to write from London, so soon as he
could give an address there; then leaving sadness behind him, carried a
deal of it with him. Only something must yet be recounted, which befell
him in Nowelhurst. And this is the first act of it.
While he was in his garret packing a little bag of necessaries,
forced upon him by Miss Doxy from Johnʼs wardrobe and her own almost
indiscriminately, and while she was pulling and struggling up–stairs
with John, and Jemima, and Jenny—for she would have made Cradock, if
she could, carry the entire house with him—he, stowing some things in
his pocket, felt what he had caught up so hastily, while flying out of
the wood. He examined it by the candlelight, and became at once intent
upon it. It had lain beneath a drift of dead leaves backed by a scraggy
branch, whence anything short of a grand “skedaddle” would never have
dislodged it.
And yet it was a great deal too pretty to be treated in that way.
Cradock could not help admiring it, though he shuddered and felt some
wild hopes vanish as he made out the meaning. It was a beautiful gold
bracelet, light, and of first–rate workmanship, harmonious too with its
purpose, and of elegant design. The lower half was a strong soft chain
of the fabric of Trichinopoli, which bends like the skin of a snake;
the front and face showed a strong right arm, gauntleted, yet entirely
dependent upon the hand of a lady. No bezilling, no jewel whatever,
except that a glorious rose–shaped pearl hung, as in contest, between
them.
Cradock wondered for some little time what could be the meaning of it.
Then he knew that it was Claytonʼs offering to the beloved Amy. No
doubt could remain any longer, when he saw in the hollow of the back
the proposed inscription pencilled, “Rosa debita”, for the dead gold of
the ladyʼs palm, “Rosa dedita” for the burnished gold of the cavalierʼs
high pressure. With ingenious love to help him, he made it out in a
moment. “A rose due, now a rose true”. That was what it came to, if you
took it in punster fashion. Just one of poor Vileyʼs conceits.
Cradock had no time to follow it out, for Miss Eudoxia then came in
with a parcel as big as a feather–bed, of comforters, wrappers, and
eatables. But, after he had left the house, he began to think about
it, in the little path across the green to the village churchyard.
He concluded that Amy must have been in the wood that fatal evening.
She must have come to meet Clayton there; and yet it was not like
her. Facts, however, are facts, as sure as eggs are eggs; though our
knowledge makes no great advance through either of those aphorisms.
But a growing sense of injury—though he had no right to feel injured,
however it might be—this sense had kept him from asking for Amy, or
leaving the flirt a good–bye.
He entered the quiet churchyard, with the moon rising over the
tombstones, a mass of shadow cast by the great tower, and some epitaphs
pushing well into the light, like the names which get poked into
history. The wavering glance of the diffident moon, uncertain yet what
the clouds meant, slipped along the buttressed walls, and tried to hold
on at the angles. The damp corner, where the tower stood forth, and
the south porch ran out to look at it, drew back like a ghost who was
curtseying, and declining all further inquiry. Green slime was about,
like the sludge of a river; and a hundred sacred memories, growing
weary and rheumatic, had stopped their ears with lichen.
Cradock came in at the rickety swing–stile, and, caring no shadow for
ghost or ghostess, although he had run away so, took the straight
course to the old black doorway, and on to the heart of the churchyard;
for he must say good–bye to Clayton. All Nowelhurst still admired
that path; but those who had paved and admired it first were sleeping
on either side of it. The pavement now was overlapped, undertucked,
and crannied, full of holes where lobworms lived and came out after
a thunderstorm, and three–cornered dips that looked glazed in wet
weather, but scurfy and clammy in drought. And some of the flags stole
away and gave under, as if they too wanted burial, while others jerked
up, and asserted themselves as superior to some of the tombstones.
There in the dark, no mortal with any respect for his grandfather,
nor even a ghost with unbevilled soles, could go many steps without
tripping.
Who will be astonished, then, when I say that the lightest and
loveliest foot that ever tripped in the New Forest not only tripped
but stumbled there? At the very corner where the side walk comes
in, and the shade of the tower was deepest, smack from behind a
hideous sarcophagus fell into Cradockʼs arms the most beautiful
thing ever seen. If he had not caught her, she must have cut the
very sweetest face in the world into great holes like the pavement.
Stunned for a moment, and then so abroad, that she could not think,
nor even speak—“speak nor think” I would have said, if Amy had been
masculine—she lay in Cradockʼs trembling arms, and never wondered where
she was. Cradock forgot all despair for the moment, and felt uncommonly
lively. It was the sweetest piece of comfort sent to him yet from
heaven. Afterwards he always thought that his luck turned from that
moment. Perhaps it did; although most people would laugh who knew him
afterwards.
Presently Amy recovered, and was wroth with herself and everybody.
Ruddier than a Boursalt rose, she fell back against the tombstone.
“Oh, Amy”, said Cradock, retiring; “I have known it long. Even you are
turned against me”.
“I turned against you, Mr. Nowell! What right have you to say that of
me”?
“No right to say anything, Amy; and scarcely a right to think anything.
Only I have felt it”.
“Then I wouldnʼt give much for your feelings. I mean—I beg your
pardon—you know I can never express myself”.
“Of course, I know that”, said Cradock.
“Oh, canʼt I, indeed”? said Amy; “I dare say you think so, Mr. Nowell.
You have always thought so meanly of me. But, if I canʼt express my
meaning, I am sure my father can. Perhaps you think you know more than
he does”.
“Amy”, said Cradock, for all this was so unlike herself, that, loving
that self more than his own, he scarce knew what to do with it; “Amy,
dear, I see what it is. I suspected it all along”.
“What, if you please, Mr. Nowell? I am not accustomed to be suspected.
Suspected, indeed”!
“Miss Rosedew, donʼt be angry with me. I know very well how good you
are. It is the last time I shall ever see you, or I would not restore
you this”.
The moon, being on her way towards the southeast, looked over the
counter–like gravestone, and Cradock placed on the level surface the
bracelet found in the wood. Amy knew it in a moment; and she burst out
crying—
“Oh, poor Clayton! How proud he was of it! Mr. Nowell, I never could
have thought this of you; never, never, never”!
“Thought what of me, Amy? Darling Amy, what on earth have I done to
offend you”?
“Oh, nothing. I suppose it is nothing to remind me how cruel I have
been to him. Oh no, nothing at all. And all this _from you_”.
In a storm of sobs she fell upon Jeremy Wattleʼs tombstone, and Cradock
put one arm around her, to prevent her being hurt.
“Amy, you drive me wild. I have brought it to you only because it is
yours, and because I am going away”.
“Cradock, it never was mine. I refused it months ago; and I believe he
gave it—you know what he was, poor dear—I believe he transferred it,
and something else—oh no, I canʼt express myself—to—just to somebody
else”.
“Oh, you darling! and who was that other? What a fool he must have
been! Confound it, I never meant that”.
“I donʼt know, Cradock. Oh, please keep away. But I think it was Pearl
Garnet. Oh, Cradock, dear Cradock, how dare you? No, I wonʼt. Yes, I
will, Crad; considering all your misery”.
She put up her pure lips in the moonlight—for Cradock had got her in
both arms by this time, and was listening to no reason—her sweet lips,
pledged once pledged for ever, she put them up in her love and pity,
and let him do what he liked with them. And the moon, attesting a
thousand seals hourly, never witnessed one more binding.
After all, Cradock Nowell, so tried of Heaven, so scourged with the
bitterest rods of despair, your black web of life is inwoven now with
one bright thread of gold. The purest, the sweetest, the loveliest girl
that ever spun happiness out of sorrow, or smiled through the veil of
affliction, the truest and dearest of all Godʼs children, loving all
things, hating none, pours into your heart for ever all that fount
of love. Freed henceforth from doubt and wonder (except at her own
happiness), enfranchised of another world, enriched beyond commercial
thoughts, ennobled beyond self, she blushed as she spoke, and grew
pale as she thought, and who shall say which was more beautiful?
Cradock could tell, perhaps, if any one can; but he only knew that he
worshipped her. And to see the way she cried with joy, and how her
young bosom panted; it was enough to warm old Jeremy Wattle, dead and
buried nigh fourscore years.
Cradock, all abroad himself, full of her existence, tasting, feeling,
thinking nothing, except of her deliciousness, drew his own love round
to the light to photograph her for ever. Poor Clayton was dead; else
Crad would have thought that he deserved to be so, for going away to
Pearl Garnet: but then the grapes were sour. How he revelled in that
reflection! And yet it was very wrong of him.
Amy stood up in the moonlight, not ashamed to show herself. She felt
that Cradock was poring upon her, to stereotype every inch of her; and
yet she was not one atom afraid. She knew that no man ever depreciates
his own property, except in the joke which is brag. It is a most
wonderful thing, what girls know and what they _wonʼt_ know. But who
cares now for reflections?
Her thick hair had all fallen out of her hat, because she had been
crying so; her delicate form, still so light and girlish, leaned
forward in trust of the future, and the long dark lashes she raised for
her lover glistened with the deep light under them. Shame was nestling
in her cheeks, the shame of growing womanhood, the down on the yet
ungathered fruit of love. Then she crept in closer to him, to stop him
from looking so much at her.
“Darling Cradock, my own dear Cradock, donʼt you know me now? You see,
I only love you so because you are so unlucky, and I am so dreadfully
obstinate”.
“Of course, I know all that, my pet; my beauty inexpressible. And,
remember that I only love you so because you are such a darling”.
Then Amy told him how sorry she was for having been so fractious
lately; and that she would never be so again, only it was all his
fault, because she wanted to comfort him, and he would not come and
let her—here the softest gleam fluttered through her tears, like the
Mazarine Blue among dewdrops—and that only for the veriest chance, and
the saucer she had broken—but what of that, she would like to know;
it was the surest sign of good luck to them, although it was the best
service—only for that, her Crad would have gone—gone away for ever, and
never known how she loved him; yes, with all her heart, every single
atom of it, every delicious one, if he _must_ know. And she would keep
it for him for ever, for ever; and be thinking of him always. Let him
recollect that, poor darling, and think of his troubles no more.
Then he told her how Uncle John had behaved—how nobly, how
magnanimously; and had given every bit of money he possessed in the
world for Cradock to start in life with. John Rosedewʼs only child
began to cry again at hearing it, and put her little hand into her
pocket in the simplest way imaginable. “Yes, you will, dear”; “No, I
wonʼt”; went on for several minutes, till Amy nestled quite into his
bosom, and put her sweet lips to his ear.
“If you donʼt, I will never believe that you love me truly. I am your
little wife, you know; and all that I have is yours”.
The marriage–portion in debate was no more than five and sixpence, for
Amy could never keep money long; so Cradock accepted the sweet little
purse, only he must have a bit of her hair in it. She pulled out her
little sewing–case, which she always took to the day–school, and the
small bright scissors flashed in the moonlight, and they made a great
fuss over them. Two great snips were heard, I know; for exchange, after
all, is no robbery.
Then hand in hand they went together to see poor Claytonʼs grave, and
Cradock started as they approached, for something black was moving
there.
“Little dear”, said Amy, as the doggie looked mournfully up at them,
“she would starve if it were not for me. And I could not coax her to
eat a morsel until I said, ‘Clayton, poor Clayton!’ And then she licked
my hand and whined, and took a bit to please me. She has had a very
nice tea to–night; I told you I broke the saucer, but that was all my
own clumsiness”.
“And what has she got there? Oh God! I canʼt stand it; it is too
melancholy”.
Black Wena, when it was dark that evening, and Clayton must have done
dinner, had stolen away to his dressing–room, and fetched, as she had
been taught to do, his smoking–jacket and slippers. It took her a long
time to carry the jacket, for fear it should be wet for him. Then she
came with a very important air, and put them down upon his grave, and
wagged her tail for approval. She was lying there now, and wondering
how much longer till he would be ready.
Cradock sobbed hysterically, and Amy led him softly away to the place
where his travelling–bag was.
“Now, wait here one moment, my poor dear, and I will bring you your
future companion”.
Presently Amy came back, with Wena following the coat and the
slippers. “Darling Cradock, take her with you. She is so true and
faithful. She will die if she is left here. And she will be such a
comfort to you. Take her, Cradock, _for my sake_”.
The last entreaty settled it. Cradock took the coat and slippers, and
carried Wena a little way, while she looked back wistfully at the
churchyard, and Amy coaxed and patted her. They agreed on the road that
Amy Rosedew should call upon Miss Garnet to restore the bracelet, and
should mark how she received it; for Amy had now a strong suspicion
(especially after what Cradock had seen, which now became intelligible)
that Pearl knew more of poor Claytonʼs death than had been confessed to
any one.
“My own Cradock, only think”, said Amy; “I have felt the strongest
conviction, throughout, that you had nothing to do with it”.
“Sweetest one”, he replied, with a desperate longing to clasp her, but
for Wena and the carpetbag, “that is only because you love me. Never
say it again, dear; suspense, or even doubt about it, would kill me
like slow poison”.
Amy shuddered at his tone, and thought how different men were: for a
woman would live on the hope of it. But she remembered those words when
the question arose, and rejoiced that he knew not the whole of it.
And now with the great drops in her eyes, she stood at her fatherʼs
gate, to say good–bye to her love. She would not let him know that she
cried; but Wena was welcome to know it, and Wena licked some tears
off, and then quite felt for Amy.
“Good–bye, my own, my only”, said Cradock, for the twentieth time; even
the latch of the gate was trembling; “God loves us, after all, Amy. Or,
at any rate, He loves you”.
“And you, and you. Oh, Cradock! if He loves one, He must love both of
us”.
“I believe He does”, said Cradock; “since I have seen you, I am sure of
it. Now I care not for the world, except my world in you”.
“Dearest darling, life of my life, promise me not to fret again”.
“Fret, indeed, with you to love me! Give me just one more”.
Cradock, with a braver heart than he ever thought to own again (and
yet with a hole and a string in it, for, after all, he did not own
it), being begged away at last by the one who then went down on her
knees, only to beg him back again,—that hapless yet most blessed fellow
strode away as hard as he could, for fear of running back again; and
the dusky trees closed round him, and he knew and loved every one of
them. Then the latch of the gate for the last time clicked, when he was
out of sight, and the laurustinus by the pier, beginning to bud for the
winter, glistened in the moonlight with a silent storm of tears.
END OF VOL. I.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. WHITING, BEAUFORT HOUSE, STRAND.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] “Wivvery”, _i. e._ giddy and dizzy.—[?] “Weavery”, from the clack
and thrum of the loom; or, more probably, a softer form of “quivery”:
the West Saxon loves to soften words.
TRANSCRIBERʼS NOTES:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
—A Table of Contents was not in the original work; one has been
produced and added by Transcriber.